A Result So Good It Made Me Sick!

As I'm sure you all know I occasionally sell part of my action in poker tournaments. But I also take other people's action from time to time.

This weekend my good friend Matt Lessinger took the short flight to Reno to play in the $3,000 buy in event at the Grand Sierra World Poker Challange and I invested $300 for 10% of the resulting win or loss.

The tournament kicked off with 118 entrants and a VERY strong field that contained at least a dozen of the top 100 tournament players in the world as well as many other accomplished players. At the end of day 1 they were down to 16 players and Matt was in 13th chip position with the edge of the money being 9th place which paid $7,500.

Happily Matt rallied, got back into the thick of things and ended up finishing in 5th place. While 1st place paid a whopping $130,000, 5th resulted in a net profit of just over $21,000, which meant $2,100 was headed my way!

When they were down to 7 players or so I got on the horn with my good friends E.B. and Jake (who were also lucky enough to have 10% of the action!) and we agreed to throw some clothes in our overnight bags and head to Reno ASAP. Since it was going to be a three and a half hour drive we knew we probably wouldn't catch the end of the tournament, but we also knew it would be fun to go gamble it up and celebrate with Matt whatever the final result ended up being.

We made it to Reno at around midnight and met up with Matt and another friend of ours (Cole) who made the trip with Matt. We then procedded to play a hodge podge of casino games which was anchored by a spirited craps session that involved as much yelling and dumb ass behavior as they will allow. Of course we were all sending down the booze as fast as the waitress would bring it to us and by 6 or so Jake and I had had enough and called it a night. I'm not quite sure when Matt broke down and went to sleep, but I know Cole was out until 9 and in classic E.B. style he played straight through the night and met us for brunch at noon.

After a splash of additional gambling it was time to pack up and head home. Jake in true man style took a flight directly to Vegas from Reno to meet his wife and some of her MBA classmates who were headed there at the same time to blow of some post finals steam. The rest of us were headed to the car to drive back to the bay area.

Desipite being up $2,100 from Matt and being good and drunk the night before I'd kept my negative expectation gambling in check and was actually ahead $20 as we were headed out the door. Of course someone had to go and drop a $20 bill on black at a roulette table and in a matter of about 6 milliseconds we all had $20-$50 on the table.

One roll turned into a few and after assorted wins and losses I found myself with the same $20. We all declared that the next spin would be the last and I slid a $5 chip out on to the number 16 (My birthday, my anniversery, and the day I proposed to my wife are all on the 16th of various months), and a $15 bet on red. And then...BANG - 16!!! 35 to 1 on $5 and even money on another $15!

With the little roulette splash and Matt's excellent result I picked up a very easy $2,300+ and had a nice 24 hour Reno trip. Actually it was a nice 21 hours and three hours of tourture when a hangover, a huge lunch, and some sever motion sickness collided! There's nothing like having to use the emergency puke box, and then puking more as you open the car door and more into a bush and then A LOT more 2 hours later on the side of the freeway. I think it's going to be about a week before I get into a car for any reason!